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THE
SCHOLAR GYPSY |
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Arnold's Footnote: ‘There
was very lately a Lad in the University of Oxford, who was by his poverty
forced to leave his studies there; and at last to join himself to a company
of vagabond gipsies. Among these extravagant people, and by the insinuating
subtilty of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem
as that they discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty
while well exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of
scholars, who had formerly been of his acquaintance. They quickly spied
out their old friend among the Gipsies; and he gave them an account of
the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, and told them that
the people he went with were not such impostors as they were taken for,
but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could
do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy binding that of others:
that himself had learnt much of their art, and when he had compassed the
whole secret, he intended, he said, to leave their company, and give the
world an account of what he had learned.’— Allott, K. (ed.), The Poems of Matthew Arnold (London, 1965), 333. |